Curious how the Oscar ballot process works?

Well, we all are to one degree or another, and this article in Variety does a good job of breaking it down. It's quite long, but here's a taste:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences consists of 15 branches; voters nominate work in their own branch (directors nominate directors, editors nom editors, etc.). Everyone nominates best pic.

Nomination ballots will be mailed Dec. 28, and voters will receive a card with five blank spaces (in most categories) to fill in their top five choices.

OK, so far it’s easy, isn’t it? But now comes the hard part.

This year, the best-pic category will feature 10 blank spaces because of the expanded number of noms. Many voters will agonize over the order of their 10 choices. These voters mistakenly believe all 10 will count for something. In truth, only one of them will. And it may not be their first choice.

Confused?

Of course you are.

PricewaterhouseCoopers executives Brad Oltmanns and Rick Rosas explained it to me, and I will try to pass it along to you. But a disclaimer: I went over this several times with Rosas and Oltmanns (who are smart, have a great sense of humor and, crucially, are patient). I’ve written about it before and I still don’t completely get it. So if the following seems confusing, don’t blame yourself. But it does kinda/sorta make sense.

Here’s a case study. The directors branch had 375 voting members (as of 2008). So the PWC mavens take the number of possible nominees in that category (five) and add one. That total, six, is divided into the 375, which yields the magic number of 63. In round one of nomination tallies, the PWC folks take all the directors’ ballots and count up voters’ first-place choices: Any contender who earns the magic number — 63 votes — automatically has enough for a nomination.

The PWC mavens then set aside the ballots of those members who voted for that director, never to look at the other choices, because that voter’s voice has been heard. (And it’s possible more than one director has achieved that magic number.)

Then the team goes to round two: They take the stack with the fewest number of votes, and look at the second choice, and redistribute the ballots among the stacks. However, if a voter picked a director who had already hit the magic number, they go to the voter’s next choice. For each round, they look to a voter’s next highest choice — second, third, fourth, fifth — so long as that director remains in the running and has not otherwise hit the magic number.

OK, you totally understand the nomination process, right? Good, because we will explain the final ballots, and then there will be a quiz (and, yes, I do take off points for misspellings and bad penmanship).

-The whole article can be found here, and it's a good read...thoughts?